


Pride and Desire

by Keturagh



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Begging, Body Horror, Cock & Ball Torture, Cock Bondage, Degradation, Desire Demons (Dragon Age), Dom/sub, Dominatrix, Edgeplay, Electricity, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Humiliation, Master/Pet, Masturbation, Pain for pleasure, Praise Kink, Rope Bondage, Rough Body Play, Self-Hatred, Sub Solas, Temperature Play, Verbal Humiliation, Wax Play, ballbusting, self-inflicted pain, sub!solas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 03:31:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11705922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: Fen’Harel looks to his Mistress to help him in the way only she can. He relinquishes everything to her. As the world burns under the fires of his revolution, she is the only one left who can bring him to heel.





	1. Chapter 1

His hands are crusted with blood when he leans against her door. She must hear him, or she senses his roiling mana. She opens the door and lets him fall on her, wraps him in her arms, cooing soft things that don’t matter to either of them. She leads him into the room and shuts the door behind him.

The room she’s chosen is spacious. There are berries in a small bowl on a low table. She’s gathered pine cones in baskets, all shapes and sizes, dark and light brown, piled up around the settee, the fireplace, on the windowsills of the two large windows, and beside the tub. It is a simple brass tub in a corner close to the fire. There are also bouquets of elderbrush and whiteflower set on side-tables and arranged in bowls on the floor. Their scents are sweet and delicate over the earthy pine. She knows he likes these things: the aromatic landscape of their time together, smells that remind him of when he was calm.

The fire in the fireplace warms him as she peels his garments from him. He helps her unbuckle and divest him of his attire. The golds are brown with blood.

She helps lower him into the tub. She has kept the water warm, anticipating him. He cannot stop himself from moaning as she massages his aching arms. She kneads the muscles of his forearms, makes him flex and relax his biceps, digs her touch into his shoulders.

“Does that feel good?” she asks.

“Very - _hunh_ \- very good, thank you.” With an effort, he remains formal. _I am not like her,_ the voice inside himself insists. _We are not alike. We are not the same kind of person._

She reaches around and massages his front, then massages his back. She makes him lean forward. The scented water, vanilla and mixed herbs, splashes up his chest as she works down the sides of his spine. Hypnotic, her strokes are long and certain, her thrusts are well-placed and bring an airy, swirling peace into the plague of his mind.

She works the tension from his aching body. She reaches the base of his spine, her arms submerged and making small lapping waves in the bathwater. She pulls him back as she works her strong, strict fingers up his spine and to his shoulders and then over his neck. And then she is touching his scalp, pressing firmly. The shame and fear overwhelm him. She massages the places where the protrusions ache. She slathers a heavy, cool cream into the cracked skin around the base of the nascent horns. She reaches around and tends to the skin pulling away from the ridges on his cheeks: the hard chrysalis of what he is becoming, black like burned bone.

The bar of soap she presses all over his body feels smooth and smells like forest and flowers, but he lets himself drift away.

When he next becomes aware of her hands touching him, she is guiding him from the pink water of the bath. She dries him with a plush cloth towel. He stands before her naked. She is wearing a sensible gown, dusty pink and blue and he tries to place it, then decides it is not one he has seen before. She glances up and realizes that he is back in his body; gently, she smiles.

“All here now?”

He nods mutely. She stands and cups his chin. “You’re certain you’re able to do this tonight?”

“It has to be tonight,” he says. He closes his eyes and allows his weight to rest in her palm. Even this small affection shudders through him, uncoils his soul.

“But are you capable?” she insists again.

He nods and kisses her wrist. “Yes. Thank you. Yes. I am able.”

“Alright.” She presses a cup into his hands. “Drink it to keep your strength up.”

She walks towards the settee and he follows her, downing the drink in one gulp, dropping the cup onto one of the side-tables. She laughs at the face he makes. He tastes the elfroot mixed into the tea. He sits next to her and listens as she describes what he will do this night; he makes requests; she modifies her plans. This continues for some time while he feels the root doing its healing work, the gritty strength of earth-based magic knitting through the places in his body that have been broken by the battles of the day.

“After all, you’re an artist,” she says, after their negotiations are complete.

“I was,” he allows. He does not create anymore. He maims, he wastes, he dismantles.

Knowing his thoughts, she counters, “That is its own breed of art, Dread Wolf.”

He does not contradict her. He is too eager to begin. He does not want to hold on anymore; he wants to start relinquishing and he starts by giving her this argument. She sees this and puts down her own cup of tea, the porcelain clinking.

“Fetch the things required, and arrange them in front of the mirror,” she instructs him. Her tone is stern, but not cruel. Not yet. He sinks to the floor on his knees and shuffles back from her, low, because he is not to raise his head above her own when this begins.

_“Never let a dog’s head higher than the master’s, isn’t that the saying?” she’d chuckled._

_“Yes, vhenan,” he’d agreed; months ago, now._

When he is safely far enough away he stands and goes to the shelves. He takes the painter’s drop cloth first, the heavy canopy splattered with old projects, and brings it to the mirror. The mirror is on the opposite side of the room from the fireplace. It is a dressing-glass, long enough to see one’s whole attire, made of dark brown acacia with a gilt frame. The canopy flaps and makes fussy uncrumpling noises when he shakes it flat. Dust and the smell of gesso and chalk puff up from the stains. He smooths the corners and then retrieves the candle in its wooden bowl, the box of paintbrushes of various sizes, the jar of ointment, and, finally, he walks back to the fireplace. When he nears her he drops to his knees and crawls past her feet. She sips her tea and does not watch him, gazing out the windows at the day dropping into evening.

He uses a hook and cloth to remove the kettle from the fire, and then must be very careful in the way he carries it back past her. He shuffles on his knees; they are bare and the floor hurts them. He keeps his gaze dropped to the floor in front of him.

With the steaming kettle, brushes, and candle on the dropcloth there is only one item left to collect. Her voice is strong, carrying across the room. His hand pauses.

“Not that one. The white silk. The braided length,” she says.

He picks up the white braided rope and leaves behind the rope he had been reaching for: raw hemp, all barbs and fibers and painful teeth.

He silences the resentment, the moment of distrust. _Will she give me what I need?_ But he must trust her. He surrenders his uncertainty and takes his place, kneeling, in front of the mirror.

“This is the last time you will use for magic for the evening, Solas. Light the candle.”

It stings him. This request is crueler than it would have been a year ago, and she knows it.

Now, he is made to reach into that place within himself that wants for fire from the Fade. It is a glowing intention in his mind: one sullied by war and fear, but still as bright as ever. The essence of his mana shifts to speak with the Fade: invisibly, it takes the shape of cottonwood tufts hovering in the summer sky, catching all the heat of the sun in their centers. The Fade responds and becomes like a sun; he attracts the idea of fire like a honeytrap, then directs it to manifest as a flame.

It is a long time and wax is just beginning to pool in the candle before she gives him the next instruction. He breathes and does not think of anything much. He looks down at a red stain near his right knee. He does not look in the mirror.

“Rise on your knees. Position the candle between your legs. Kneel above the fire, Dread Wolf, and discipline your body so that you are not burned.”

The little candlelight sways as he pushes the bowl between his knees. The sensation of heat curls up from the flame; his legs are long, so that when he holds himself upright his cock is in no danger of swinging into the heat. But a thrill prickles through him at the danger, at the possibility of all she might subject him to.

“Apply the ointment with both hands,” she says.

He dips into the small pot and closes his eyes, smearing the light, creamy oil mixture over his testes, cock, and lower stomach. This is to make the cleaning easier, later. But he applies it as she has asked: with both hands, stroking the oil up and down his shaft - and his cock responds, bulging, rising, too eager. He feels his own rough, familiar callouses under the slick sensation of oil, and briefly wishes that she would cross the room, tie his hands, and roughly take him with her own touch.

“Will you do as I ask, Solas?” she asks, crooning from somewhere behind him; at the fireplace, he realizes, hearing her place another log on the fire.

“Yes, vhenan,” he says, his smile already languid with the satisfaction of stroking his cock for her. His whole body shivers, thinking of what it would be for her to wrap her arms around him; just to be allowed to hold her, he would promise anything.

“So very eager,” she chuckles at his size, at how quickly he is throbbing for her. He flushes, warm, eyes still closed and hands dropping at his sides, already twitching with the anticipation of what comes next. “We can’t let you run around with that free, hm?” she mocks his length, rallying the myths of virile hunting in the ancient forests, the tales that were told of him before all of his tales were tales of death; she invokes clear summer skies and voracious appetites: the smell of ripe, juicing berries, and sweating in the long grass.

“No, you mustn’t,” he agrees, licking his lips. He feels the heat of the candle between his legs, the drop cloth rough under his knees, but he is lost in the darkness of his closed eyes, and in the dreams that always meet him there.

“Tie yourself, Dread Wolf,” she instructs.

He reaches for where he has left the rope.

“And,” she adds, “look at yourself. Ravenous. I want you to see yourself. Open your eyes. And look.”

Mercy, vhenan, the plea comes to his mind. She snorts. He grimaces, wondering what it would really mean now, mercy, and how he could have the gall to ask for it. Why does she do this for him? … He knows why, and he silences the part of himself that still fears that one day he will walk into a room like this, and she will have gone.

“Sink a little lower, Solas,” she advises. He does so, spreading his thighs apart and feeling the heat of the candle more acutely. He sulks a glance up to the mirror. For a moment, he sees himself. Then he is quick to turn his gaze, to the exclusion of all else, on his erection. This is as she has instructed, after all. She has told him to look, but that does not mean he must look at all of himself. He reviles the thing that looks back at him. He focuses his gaze on his carnality.

Completing the tie in the mirror might have been a challenge to him as a younger man, but now he completes the pattern purely by rote. He is careful not to let the ends dangle too near the flame. First the column over his testes, and then the ring around the base of his cock. His fingers feel good. The lines holding his testicles press snugly. When he widens his stance and sinks even lower on his knees, his testes can no longer shrink up and away from the flames, held as they are by the rope. When he tips his hips forward to work the rope, his balls shift over the burning candle and his heart flips with fear. He works the rope in crosses up his length. The line is soft and smooth, pearling with the shine of the oil. The candlewax pools as he works; he takes his time.

 _I would have used the hemp,_ he grits his teeth at the thought of the abrasive, fibrous rope digging into his length. But tonight she is showing him, inexplicably, all of these small, senseless mercies.

The small candle flame flickers, never quite tall enough to brush his hanging balls, but, at times, uncomfortably close.

When he finishes tying his cock he loops one finger through the knot under his tip and tugs, feeling the pull all through his length; it does not cinch or pinch, and will be safe. She leans forward on the settee to see him in the mirror. He looks down and away. He must not see her; she has become something that is not herself, and if he looks at her the spell will shatter. She surveys the pale silk tight against the flushed, red arousal of his erection. A sheen of precum comes to his tip and he flexes to push it out further; it feels good like that, straining against the bindings, and he swallows and flexes his cock again, revelling in the way the ropes squeeze and hold him.

“That’s enough of that,” she says sternly, and he stops, demure.

“Yes, vhenan.”

The way she chuckles is like the bubbling of an opened peach, split at the height of season. And then she is quiet, and he hears her settling back onto the settee, her skirt shifting as she puts her feet up. He stares dully at his own wrapped erection and remembers: his head buried in her shoulder, laughing as he lifts her off the bed, her hugging his face in her hands as she kisses him. He remembers tumbling with her, and then pulsing: into her wet heat, onto her breasts, or spurting over her ass - cleaning her, holding her while the sun shone brightly through stained glass windows.

The sky through the windows is darkening to an eerie, lovely pink, looming above a persimmon horizon. The sunsets have all been beautiful these days.

He waits for her to speak to him, to instruct him. He exists at her leisure, and in the in-between time he floats: his cock stays taut with the constriction and his anticipation of her beckoning. The little candle burns low in its bowl. The pool of wax grows. He holds himself over the flame. A log shifts, then breaks, sundered by the heat within. The smell of the fire will always remind him of nights spent under open skies. The ceiling here is built with heavy honey oak beams. He remembers staring up at the ceiling in the little hut in Haven, his thoughts racing, this endeavor with the Orb dissolving in his mind from a game of chess to a fireside tale, with no winners but a moral. A moral he could not yet understand. He felt only that fate was intervening where logic should have ruled.

He remembers staring up at the ceiling in Skyhold, his ear against her belly.

It was wrong. He has done so much wrong. It was wrong, but oh, it was at least _a wrong that was wonderful._

He remembers the quiet shock of her words each time, _"Ar lath ma.”_

There is a sound of a page turning behind him on the settee.

He remembers how he touched his fingers to her chin. He remembers her mouth turning up and meeting his. The Veil was thin wherever she kissed him; their lips met and the barriers trembled. He slid his tongue across her lip… his cock jerks up once, twice, and again in its restraints.

“Dreaming, Dread Wolf?” she asks, indolent, turning another page.

“I dream so often these days, vhenan,” he apologizes.

“Hm. Check the wax.” He is allowed to glance away from his own hardness. He observes how the wax has pooled, forming a reservoir of oil which could be used for massage or ornamentation. This is no candle which one would burn to read by at night: it has been crafted for this specific purpose.

“The candle has almost burned down,” he informs her. “It is perhaps ready, if you wish it.”

“Excellent, let’s not allow your attention to wander too far… start your work, Solas. I wish for you to paint for me.”

“Yes, vhenan,” he answers, nerves tangling in his gut. He stops his hands from trembling as he guides the bowl from between his legs, blows out the flame, sets it aside, and picks one of the paintbrushes from the cherrywood case.

“Look at yourself while you paint - take Pride in your art,” she mocks, caustic, taking up the viciousness that he _needs_ to crush him now.

His shame is a ball of heat in his chest; he forces himself to look as she instructs him to look: at what he has become, half-enthralled to the demon of his temperament. _We are most impressive,_ the voice within him gloats. _We command so much power._ One horn curls taller than another; they’ve come in unevenly, proof of his resistance to this usurpation. The steam from the kettle sits in a wet fog on the glass, obscuring the violet pallor spreading under his eyes.

The wax shifts slowly when he dips the fan. It shines on the black bristles, small divots still popping with heat. He is quick to move the paintbrush from bowl to length, knowing what the effect will be, hungry for it. The wax touches his cock still boiling hot; he hisses, grunts coming from his throat, “ah, _ah,_ ” and the humility that comes from continuing to apply the wax in a long, languorous stroke up his erection. He trembles. Chasing that heat, that first sweet hit of agony, is intense. She will not let him have another, he knows, and so, staring defiantly at what looks back at him from the mirror, he punishes his body for every way in which it has failed him.

“Take longer with the rest of the application,” is her expected, even correction.

He nods, grateful to have been given this much but knowing not even he could withstand much more. The next time he dips the paintbrush in the wax, he turns it in the air, watching the oil dew and slide. He takes his time before he presses the bristles to his length, the oily wax cooler when it brushes his cock. The heat from his first pass has still not abated, trapped under the hardening wax. Were he not a god _(yet I am no god, he insists to the spirit boasting in his soul, I am no god)_ there would be greater danger.

As it is, he stipples and strokes, covering his cock with the exquisite light pressures of fine painting. It feels good. The press of the brush teases; he cross-hatches for a different sensation. The painting is a torment of small, warm enticements. He is pleasuring himself, but the feeling is decidedly removed. _Like a tongue,_ he thinks distantly. _Or a toe._ The warmth and touch are beguiling to him, sensual, making him almost lethargic. And the warmth builds and builds beneath the hardening layers, greater and greater heat trapped against his cock. The feeling is like a low fire along his length.

The lines of the rope disappear under the layers of wax. He gently pulls his cock forward by its untouched tip, using the mirror to angle the brush against the underside of his erection. The wax falls down to the base of his cock, dripping down his balls. As it hardens he feels the tightness of it; his fingers, on his tip, trace the fine, silky lines of the rope - his movements are discreet, quick. He has been hard for so long, and his hands are right there… he wants to… he could… A more vigorous rub, a throb of his sex. His breath catches on his teeth and he stutters a low moan.

“Still trying to hide things from me?” he hears her soft challenge.

His fingers halt at once.

“No, vhenan, I -”

“Stop talking, you _stupid_ fucker,” she says, very light, and he hears the idle turn of another page.

He drops his gaze to the floor, to the cloth, splattered with red.

After a long moment where he is quiet and small with fear, she sighs.

“Solas, do as I have asked you. And do no more,” she says, sounding almost bored, and this cuts deeper than any whipping could have touched him. He swallows down the pain in his throat and wants _more, more._

“Yes, vhenan,” he promises, fighting tears.

He resumes the task she has set him. His cock is starting to feel heavy with its load, squeezed and hot.

The magnificent sunset could have been painted. As the sun goes down, black clouds smudge the sky like thistles in a queen’s skirt. _Though if any divine hand lifted to make such a glory, it was ours,_ that voice within him offers. He burns against this truth: that he has made this sunset. Fires flume through the cities. And how beautiful, how gorgeous, has been the opening of the sky to this riot of shade and hue. The air is full of his cruelty. The air shines with so many sublime colors before the fall of each night. There is fire in every city. The valleys burn.

All he feels is hot: the heat of the wax. He is fully encased, with the intentional exception of his bare tip. He has watched himself in the mirror the entire time, not fully present, drifting in the sensation; as his mind has wandered, his thoughts have quieted. His eyes are only half-open just now, lusty. He sees a vague smile twitch at his lips, revealing the sharp teeth of his anamorphosis. _Ruin,_ he corrects. But he’s buzzing, looking at himself without really looking - released from this horror of the body that looks back at him. He is apart. All embodiment has been disagreeable to him, but being overtaken by this form has been nauseating and frightening. It reveals so much of the man he has become.

He does not admit to himself how his hand trembles as he paints the final layers. The sensation of touch is diminished, removed. The wax on the brush has started to accumulate, hardening as it cools and gums up the bristles. He spins the brush over the steaming kettle and the wax reacts to the heat, falling once again into glossy, workable paste.

“You need to be taught to heel, Dread Wolf,” she says, the sound of her cup clinking as she sets it back down.

“Yes.” He says, quietly, though he feels like shouting it. He feels like moaning it, burying his head in her lap. He feels like it’s the only word he’ll ever let her hear him speak again.

“You idiot mongrel. Despicable, foolish ass,” her voice gloats and he whimpers, nodding, staring hard at the object of her ire in the mirror: there is nothing to dispute.

“Yes,” he whispers.

The heat has become a constant high-pitched thrum of sensation throbbing all along his cock, down around his testes.

He puts the brush aside, and lifts the bowl.

“What use do I have for you?” she scoffs. “Useless, perverted. But you like that, don’t you? You like someone reminding you of what a rotten, low-down worm you are. Filthy dog.”

“Yes,” he says.

“Pour,” she says.

He tips the bowl and the remainder of the wax falls, oozing, dripping from the lip. It folds into the air, supple. He watches the stream reach his aching, pulsing tip and then his head jerks back; his eyes roll, he stifles a groan, disciplining his arms to stay still, to let the remainder of the hot wax sheath his cock even as his body trembles against the heat and the restraint and the supplication of him before the mirror: vulnerable, wanting, needy.

He’s distantly aware of the sound of the bowl falling and rolling on the cloth.

“Good,” she says.

He almost ejaculates. She knows it, too; she’s placed the word perfectly into the sea of his pounding blood. He collapses inside himself. He is entirely hers.

He feels the night fold down across the world, the touch of the Veil weakening as the moon crests the dark horizon.

He is weak, weakened, hurting, and _good._

The desperate surging in his testes, the explosive heat in his cock, subsides slowly. He floats in the lull of sensation.

“You are mine, Solas,” she purrs. “Pride. You are mine.”

“Yes,” he says hoarsely.

“Decorate yourself, Solas.”

He blearily seeks the paintbrush at his side, draws it up and starts to trace the patterns. He battles the temptation to fall away entirely. The work of writing the runes into the pliant wax requires precision. His attention slowly returns. He maps each piece in his mind, studying the mirror as he works and projecting how each rune will lay over the curves of his cock, the subtle rise of the ropes under the heavy wax. He makes the patterns with the fine thin tip of the handle: straight, crossing curve, repeating circles auxiliary the inner summoning figure.

He cleans the wax from the end and places the brush, fastidious, back into the cherrywood box.

Then he waits.

He hears the precise clipping of her heels crossing the floor. Her shadow falls into the mirror. He closes his eyes.

He knows she studies him.

“Good work,” she praises, so close to his ear that he can feel her warm breath, can hear her tongue moving, and he’s doused in virile, needy arousal.

“I did well?” he asks, his voice thick like he hasn’t spoken in weeks, years, an eternity since she last allowed him a voice.

His hips tilt up just slightly, begging for her touch.

“Let’s find out,” she says brightly, pulling away, and snaps her fingers.

 _Pain. Red._ It courses through him. He gasps because he cannot scream fast enough. The shock of lightning travels his length and vices his testes. He’s on his back, shoulders digging into the floor, hips bucking fruitlessly against the air. His weighted cock lolls and bounces comically as he convulses. The taste in his mouth is familiar, like smoke and what comes after.

She does not give him time to recover. She snaps her fingers again. The ice is a thin sheet underneath the layers of wax, directly against his cock. He shouts this time, crying out, scrambling for purchase on the wrinkling canvas beneath his elbows. Another snap, another wicked slam of lightning.

“Please, more,” he begs, sweating, chest heaving.

She retracts her magic entirely from the runes. He reaches out as if he could grab it back, but he is powerless under her command.

“Please,” he whines. “Please.”

He hears the rustle of her skirts as she stands to go, to leave him. _No, no,_ the panic is a drumming in his whole aching body. _Don’t go, don’t go._

“Hm. That sounds familiar,” she says, her hems slithering over the canvas as she circles him. He keeps his eyes pressed tightly shut.

_Don’t go._

“Yes. Yes I’ve _heard_ that before. I wonder…. I wonder when?” She snaps, snaps again. The lightning hits his pulsing cock, his testes straining against the ropes that bind them, trying to shrink against his body. The intensity of the shocks - against the oil, against the water in the ice, and against his sensitive, forcibly engorged length, are too much. She is relentless. She brings him, cresting with pain, higher and higher. He does not know when the shocks will land. He does not know how many he will suffer in quick succession, his hands gripping and tearing at the canvas, his heels stuttering against the floor. He groans, his whole body hot, wrecked, wracked, and wanting.

“Please,” he gasps, asking for something entirely different.

“Yes,” she allows him, and his hips thrust more erratically. He moans, loud, debauched, the shots of liquid heat from his testes spurting violently into the confines of the hot cocksheath.

The ropes keep him from softening after his spend.

“Thank you,” he breathes, eyes closed, not knowing where she is and afraid to move.

She snaps. The last jolt on his sensitive, overstrained erection draws a coarse sob from him. He is on his side, knees drawn up, cradling his crotch in his hands, feeling his spend dripping down his length inside the wax, bunching stickily as it dries.

“Time to clean up,” she says brightly, and he shudders.

“Sit up, kneel again” she instructs, and although his stomach is still heaving from the last shock from the runes, he scrambles, clumsily, to do as she asks, panting. “Look in the mirror,” she tells him, almost gently, taking her place back on the settee. He opens his eyes and looks.

He sees what she wants him to see.

The influence of Pride has taken a beating; he _feels_ desperate and humble. He only wants to exist for the woman who gives him his pain and pleasure - gives them to him in such generous, altruistic moods. He could not do this for himself. He needs her. He wants to need her. The corrective warp on his spirit is strong. The skin on his face is smooth; his scalp cracks where the horns used to press through the skin, but they are gone.

His sheep’s clothing that looks back at him: all his monstrosity is tucked away, back on the inside where he can deny it, and quiet it, and fool himself into believing it is not there.

His breath fogs the glass in quick bursts, then in slow, even mists. He stares and stares as the night grows deeper, as the stars start to show behind breaks in the clouds. The spirits of the Fade press eagerly against the Veil; their power redoubles. True night travels slowly past the windows. On the horizon, the clouds of ash are obfuscated, no different from the shadows of mountains against the night.

She makes him look into the mirror for a long time. Then he bows his head.

“Thank you,” he says again.

“Save it for after you’ve cleaned up,” she answers primly. He looks to where the kettle sat next to the mirror, but she has taken it back to her couch. He hears her pouring a new cup. So he will not boil the wax from himself.

“Select another paintbrush, a rather larger number, I should think.”

“Yes, vhenan,” he agrees, and reaches back. He is eager to take the large flat brush with the oak handle and the wide copper ferrule from the box. His fingers tremble as he chooses it.

She tells him, “Closer to the mirror, now.” He shuffles forward on his knees, breathing heavily.

“All the way,” she corrects. He presses all the way, up so close to the glass - but far enough away so that his hand may swing. It is what she desires, and she hums approvingly.

“Now, clean yourself off,” she says after a sip of her tea, all clemency and good humor.

“Yes,” he confesses what is incontestably true in this moment, “Yes, anything, for you.”

Then he pulls the brush back, his fingers tight around the bristles, and swings a blow against his sheath.

He grunts, moans, and cudgels himself again, and again, and again, while she sips her tea behind him and turns the pages of her book.

The wax, cool now and hard, shatters. It bounces absolutely everywhere. It drops like rain pattering onto the drop cloth, and bits ricochet into the far corners of the room, flying into a basket of pinecones or pinging off the mirror.

He grunts, throws his head back, and, gasping, asks, “Is… is this good?”

“Be thorough, my pet,” she laughs.

He batters his cock with precise, unrelenting hits. He moans. He can’t help but fantasize about how good it would feel if she would lay even one, quick smack on his balls. But the work of battering himself is on its own humiliating: how difficult it is to angle the paintbrush and put enough force behind each hit, how randy he makes himself with each wallop, how each wash of pain makes him yearn for greater indignities, to be spat on and trampled and dragged over the floor by his collar. To be crushed under her boot. To be _brought to heel._

His balls screech complaints against his pounding; they jerk and try to pull up in pain. The ropes restrain them. As he beats off the thick shell of wax, more of his cock is exposed to the hits. He stares at himself in the mirror as she has ordered. His gaze is dull, his lips parted. He does not see himself. He does not see Pride staring back and him. Instead, he sees…

“Who are you?” she asks, indulgently.

“I am,” he groans, “yours.”

“Who?”

“Yours.”

“Again.”

“I am yours.”

“Harder.”

“Yes, vhenan,” he says, and even as his length throbs, engorged and vibrantly pink, he makes the next hit harder, bruising, the handle of the paintbrush smacking; the high-panic frequency of pain rushes on him like fires burning down the alleys of his blood. Sweat drips from his chin and into his eyes. His heart is pounding so hard and fast; he bites down screams, and they come out as cresting moans.

“Come, my pet,” he hears her say, and his body complies. He collapses forward, shaking. He comes in long, indulgent sprays of seed up the length of the mirror; he grinds against the cool surface, one hand pressing the paintbrush along his cock and the other quickly unworking the ties around his balls so that all of him can be released. He rocks with the power of his lust and heat. He pulls the soiled silk ties from his cock, and then like an insatiable thing he is palming himself, coming one final time with a raw, lewd groan. His spend shoots straight up; he is carnal as he thrusts sloppily into his hand, shamelessly, gasping deeply, covering his stomach, his chest, and his own reflection in the mirror with streams of sticky spend.


	2. Chapter 2

“Dress yourself.”

Solas stares at what coats his fingers and looks up at the mess of the mirror. The semen is already starting to clump as it dries. A vague sense of disdain unsettles him; he stifles a sigh. Ah, well. He will clean the mess with magic, later. He reaches aside and wipes his hand on the drop cloth. It will never come out, but he should get another one in any case. This one is stained and pelleted with drippings of wax.

“Thank you, Kitty,” he says to the woman lounging beside the fire.

Kitty chuckles. The book in her lap rustles. He stands, goes to the shelves, and cleans his stinging crotch carefully. The moon sits fat and happy just over the horizon, her mirror self just now cresting on her heels. Both are visible only fitfully, through the quickly-moving clouds.

“There will be rain,” he observes.

“Mm. You’re ruining my book.”

Solas looks over at her, incredulous. The mortal partner of this duo may only be a woman of some thirty winters, small lines at her eyes and brief, new touches of gray, but Solas knows the spirit housed within has witnessed many centuries of mortal folly. Yet she is avid on her book. The ribbons she uses to tie her hair are draped across the arm of the couch at her elbow. She’s pulled her blonde hair loose from her braids at some point in the evening and tucked her bangs behind her horns. She will always look youthful, should she will it, and she is classically lovely: statuesque, with thin lips and a long, pert nose. She can change her voice to match the tone of his lost love’s, but her true voice is rough and thin, like she drinks too much hard liquor and does not get enough sleep.

“So you look good, Wolf,” she says, and turns to the next page of her book.

Solas ducks his head and finishes gingerly wiping down his chest, cock and balls. He dresses himself. She’s folded a set of modest clothes for him to lounge in, as he prefers. He pulls his trousers on.

“And your discretion is appreciated, as ever. How is your reading, Kitty?”

“None have tried to pay me with such before. I find it quite enjoyable,” Kitty says. She holds up the copy of Swords and Shields. This is part of the payment for her spirit, which he’d suspected would relish such things. For her mortal shell, he of course turns over an unthinkable sum of gold for this service.

He pulls on his loose, much-too-large sweater, and already feels the cold pulling at his soul. Kitty grins and returns her attention to her book. Solas’ body aches, but not just for the strain of all she’s put him through. He comes to the side of the settee and folds his hands behind his back, shifting from foot to foot. The space in his arms itches, empty. He can never bring himself to ask for this. Sometimes she punishes him for it - sends him away to curl around himself and cry alone, his own pride to blame for the vast, black emptiness of the night. He anxiously hopes that tonight, he has done well enough that she will pity him.

He’s in luck; even though she does not flick her gaze to him, the corner of her mouth curls up as she turns the page.

“Come on, then,” she invites, and he goes gratefully to the carpet at her feet. He wraps his arms around her middle and leans his head into her lap. When she settles the book back down around his shoulders, he closes his eyes. Every now and then she presses a soft red berry to his lips and tells him to eat it. Once she has him go and shift the logs in the fire, and when he returns she has him drink another elfroot tea and he presses a line of kisses down her thigh.

“You know,” he says eventually, after the sound of her turning her page wakes him from a light drowse, “you are the only one who can do this for me. Thank you.”

Kitty gives a pert, disapproving, “Hm,” then says, “Well, not the only one.”

He shakes his head into the soft silk of her dress. “No, no. I can never return to her. I rely on you.”

“That makes you vulnerable, you know.”

This makes him laugh. “Kitty, I think we are long past any warnings about the vulnerability of this arrangement.”

“Fair. But,” she shrugs and he watches her eyes scanning through the story as she speaks, “I still think you should go to her. None of my business but,” she snorts at a passage, “I can only do so much for you.”

“You do so much for me,” he insists. “Which is why I hope you continue to find pleasure in traveling as I require.”

The violet gleam sparks in her impish eyes.

“You are very gracious. I find great pleasure in our arrangement, yes.”

“And…” he ventures. “Amalia. Does the woman who hosts you continue to find pleasure in traveling with us?”

“You know we don’t like when you talk like we’re _two,_ Wolf.”

“I must be certain,” he moderates, drawing back. He goes and gets the kettle from where she’d replaced it over the fire. He refills her tea, sets the kettle on a cloth, then sits next to her on the couch.

Kitty sighs, annoyed. “Fine.”

The violet light around her eyes fades. Solas disciplines his expression. The green of her eyes is not as bright, and they are distinctly different from his vhenan’s - yet Amalia knows her eyes resemble the eyes of his heart. Her smile softens into something kind, and she caresses his chin. She’s always a little droll, this woman who went through her childhood and early adulthood as an abomination, survived, and now fights for a world that will not hunt her down. For many weeks she will serve only as trusted lieutenant in Fen’Harel’s army. Then one night, he comes to her like this.

“Solas, I’m happy,” she insists right off, her voice husky and sweet. Her fingertips linger on his ear. “Kitty is mine, and I am hers. I was,” she looks back down at her book, but only to place her finger in her current page and close it over her hand. “I was very young when Kitty and I decided to see the world together. Too young, I know now. I should have been allowed to make this choice when I was older. But Kitty… she knew what I wanted, and how much I wanted it.” Amalia sighs, and Solas is struck by how carefree she sounds. “To travel, to get away. Desire wanted that too.”

“Amalia, if ever you…”

Amalia shakes her head firmly. “ _No._ She always made sure I was safe. We do that for each other.”

“If you had suffered as I suffer,” he interrupts her, “and should the spirit inhabiting your form have mistreated you, I hope you know I would have excised her influence from you the day you presented yourself to me.”

Amalia sighs, then smiles softly. “I know. Kitty was worried about that. But then you helped…” she struggles for the word, “you helped balance us, and she knew it was going to be alright. It’s too bad you can’t do it for yourself. It’s a lot harder being two than one.”

He nods. He is not like her, he reminds himself. He is not a partner to the spirit that tries to twist his flesh - the arrogance that has grown so far apart from pride that his bones mutate and a voice within him speaks thoughts he is not sure are his own. He is not like her, and he must resist the temptation to attempt what she has mastered.

“It is difficult. This is true,” he agrees.

“Kitty gives me so much.” Amalia continues. She has a habit of tapping her foot when she speaks, curling and uncurling her toes. “She just _wanted._ She protected me from other people’s… from what people wanted from a little girl, then a young woman who was traveling alone.”

“A spirit can never possess the unwilling. A less generous man might point out that she was simply keeping her host intact.”

She looks at him, hard. “That’s not what you think.”

“No,” he raises his hands. “But as I always do, I must be certain that the balance within you is maintained.”

“Want is not always like that. … It became like that, later, when I learned I liked using it. But not always. We eat what we like, wherever we go. We never hunger.” She shrugs, drinking her tea. He understands.

“Everyone desires something.”

“It’s easy to only take a little here, a little there, when the world isn’t so confusing.” She touches his throat, and shivers. “And yours is exquisite.”

He looks away.

“Who am I talking to now?”

“Both, both of us,” she says, earnestly. He is satisfied. He looks back to her. Warmth fills her gaze, and she adds, dreamily, “I am never alone.”

Envy jerks in his gut. She leans on him, settling into his shoulder and returning to her book. She angles her horn behind his head, and he leans back against it. He watches the fire and smells the pine. He thinks about campfires: kindling built like the shape of a home, then the logs all crumble when what’s left inside is ashes.

“Where will we travel next?” Kitty asks when she finishes the last page of Swords and Shields, tossing the book onto the cushion beside her. She’s unable to hide her eagerness.

“Somewhere near the sea,” he says softly, watching the fire flick little tongues into its own smoke.

“I love the sea,” she says, delighted. “We love the clear, open sky. The people by the sea are always filled with so many longings.”

“I prefer the mountains.”

The gift of her spirit is to know his thoughts, to know everything he desires.

“I know.” Kitty soothes him with gentle hands when his shoulders shiver under his grief. She holds him and whispers the soothing things she knows he wants to hear, the things neither of them believe.


End file.
